JQuery DatePicker and ASP.NET AJAX Update Panel

The other day I attempted to use the JQuery UI DatePicker on an ASP.NET page with an UpdatePanel. It didn't work. The root of the problem was that I assumed that my javascript to wireup the DatePicker inside of $(document)ready() would fire each time that my page posted back even for partial page updates. Apparently this is not that case. A co-worker suggested placing my code inside of the pageLoad() event to solve the problem and sure enough it did. Seconnd only to having a problem I can't solve is having a problem that is solved but not understanding why the solution works. A few days later I accidently stumbled across Dave Ward's blog post "$(document).ready() and pageLoad() are not the same! which explained the problem and solution succinctly. Its is (apparently) only one of a series of articles on JQuery and ASP.NET AJAX he has written.

The MSDN article AJAX Client Life-Cycle Events explains the source of the client side event and how it is triggered on the client side even for partial page updates.

There are are a number of replies to the post, a couple of the more interesting ones I list here:

• What's the different between ASP.NET AJAX pageLoad() and JavaScript window.onload?

• http://aspnetresources.com/blog/ms_ajax_client__life_cycle_events_cheat_sheet_2

Operation Azure

I just finished my last Microsoft online training session for Azure called Operation Azure. While I can't say that the training was stellar, it was good to get a "kick" everyone week to keep working my way through the material. One of the most interesting sessions was the today's - mostly due to the interesting topics presented by Steve Marx - checkout his site which has lots of interesting dark corner stuff about Azure - http://blog.smarx.com/.

.NET XPath Debugging

Useful - http://www.codeproject.com/KB/dotnet/xpath_visualizer.aspx.

xpathdebugger.zip

Getting the Commerce Server Site Name Within an Operational Sequence Component

Ran across this somewhere - thought it might be good for futher reference.

// C#
String SiteName = OperationContext.CurrentInstance.SiteName;

Why I find Windows Phone 7 So Disappointing (so far)

Yesterday the display of my old Windows Mobile 6.0 phone pretty much completely failed so it came time for a new phone. Being a "Windows guy" I had already been thinking about upgrading to the new Windows Phone 7 in any case to see what all the hoopla was about as well as anticipating that I might get into phone development this year.

My carrier is AT&T. AT&T was not my choice, but rather I ended up with them having previously purchased a phone contract from Cingular. While AT&T gets some bad press as a carrier, up until recent billing problems I've found them to be fine. We'll see how that goes going forward.

To date, and this is after having the phone for less then 24 hours, there are a few shockers about the Windows Phone 7. These are:

• No support for synchronizing contacts or calender unless you sych directly with Exchange Server. Now there is some sort of hack to do this using a Windows Live account, my impression is that it is nothing nearly as convenient or automated as the ActiveSync program used with versions of Window Mobile. I'll update my blog when I've had a chance to investigate this
  
  

• No support for non-broadcasting WIFI! So far I ran across this thread, which include a link to a blog entry explaining why hidden SSID's are a bad idea, but regardless of the fact whether it is a bad idea or not, people/companies do it. By not supporting it makes a Windows Phone 7 a less attractive device IMHO.
  
  

Commerce Server Web Services without SSL

An oldie, but a goodie

http://microsoftblog.co.in/commerceserver/connect-to-profile-order-subsystems-without-htts/

Debugging Delay Signed Assemblies

I've run across the need to be able to debug delay signed assemblies. Specifically in my case I want to be able to step through Commerce Server 2009 template pack source code in the debugger. The source is available, but being SharePoint code, all projects are stongly named assemblies. Being written by Microsoft, the code is delayed signed. What to do?

The strong name utility (sn.exe) which is commonly used to generate code signing keys accepts a set of parameters to turn off strong name verification which allows one to debug delay signed assemblies. It goes like this:

sn.exe -Vr *

Of course one should use this only in non-production environments using code that you trust.

Don't confuse * for a filename widecard. It is not.

Beware When Editing the Commerce Server DefaultSiteCheckoutSteps

If you need to modify the Default Site Checkout Steps you need to be very careful. The code which reads/parses these list values is not very forgiving. The Control Properties column in particular is the troublesome one.

If the Control Properties column needs to hold multiple values, the code that parses these values assumes that each property is separated by a line feed ("\n"). The problem is that out of the box the list settings for this property has this column type "Single line of text".

This makes it impossible to insert a line feed. The fix is to modify the view to be "multiple lines of text", but in doing so make sure you select "plain text" or parsing will not work.

What exerbates the situation is that many of the check out XSLTControls will silently ignore when the XLT cannot be loaded and simply dumps XML into the HTML output which cannot be seen directly in the browser. This leaves you the SharePoint page editor at a loss as to what is wrong.

Visual Studio T4 Template Editor by Tangible

useful

stupid

The form cannot be rendered. This may be due to a misconfiguration of the Microsoft SharePoint Server State Service. For more information, contact your server administrator

Difficulties with checking in a publishing a (publishing page) in SharePoint 2010. Try Jeremy's blog post for a fix.

Reading Excel 2010 Data Programmatically

Thank goodness I ran across this blog post with some very slick extention methods for reading Excel data using LINQ. What a time saver. Steal this code!

SharePoint 2010 Site Pages

Ran across this excellent blog post on SharePoint 2010 Site Pages. Hopefully's Ted Paddison's upcoming Inside Microsoft SharePoint 2010 will include as clear an explanation as this does.

Haven't had time to look yet, but the mention of Community Kit for SharePoint: Development Tools Edition looks like something worth exploring.

Here is a similar article which explain how to create a (publishing) page layout, but it has a bit more screen shots to it compared the other article.

See this article on MSDN for background on the different types of SharePoint 2010 pages.

Arg!

It is with great disappointment to hear that MS seems to no longer support the further development of the Iron languages. While Powershell has its place from an admin standpoint, there is still a need for dynamic scripted languages on the .NET platform to support application extensibility. In fact there are probably a large class of applications that should be written in dynamically typed scripted languages, but are not. Much of this is because of the ignorance of the MS developer community that are stuck in the world of 'statically typed minds'. By supporting the DLR, IronPython and other DLR languages, MS could help educate software developers in the large and take a leadership role in driving innovation in software such as the OpenSource world has. Disappointing.

Selecting a Mock Library

Working on a project and finding myself handwriting a lot of stubs. In once again re-evalutating what Mock Object Library to use I ran across this. A little dated but still relevent.

TrueForOne

This page is open to edits. Please leave the original in tact and add your own version or corrections at the bottom. --chuck

    internal static class ListUtil
    {
        /// <summary>
        /// returns true if at least one item in the collection meets passes the 'critera'
        /// </summary>
        /// <typeparam name="T"></typeparam>
        /// <param name="coll"></param>
        /// <param name="criteria"></param>
        /// <returns></returns>
        public static bool TrueForOne<T>(this System.Collections.Generic.List<T> coll, Func<T, bool> criteria)
        {
            if (coll == null) return false;

            foreach (T t in coll)
            {
                if (criteria(t))
                {
                    return true;
                }
            }
            return false;
        }
    }

Extending Commerce Server Customer and Orders Manager

If you find that you need to extend the Commerce Server profile system and need an administrative tool to manage that data, Commerce Server's out-of-the-box Customer and Orders Manager application may fit the bill. A custom extension may be as simple as an additional property on an existing profile object such as UserObject or as complex as a completely new/custom profile object with a 1 to many relationship with an existing profile object.

• The solution for the simple case is described here in this blog entry.

• The solution for the more complex scenario is pretty much the same with one key additional points
  • Make sure at least 1 property on the new/custom profile object is searchable:

• Make sure that you update the authorization store to reflect the updated profile schema. This can be automated using the CreateProfilesAuthorizationStore.exe command line tool that is installed along with Commerce Server. Just make sure after creating this new auth store that you add the right groups/accounts to it.

Entity Framework Dynamic Data Issues

Noodling around with Entity Framework and more specifically using it for ASP.NET Dynamic Data. By default if you have table(s) with a primary key column using "identity" for key generation. The insert/update views rendered by the Dynamic Data pages will show edit controls for your keys! This is a issue bug, but here is a fix. See http://forums.asp.net/t/1306469.aspx, and more specifically this blog entry for possible fixes. In my specific case I needed to add an attribute to the generated entity class as follows (note the ScoffoldColumn attribute). By the way, do this in a separate partial class file if you don't want to lose the change on regeneration of your model

        /// <summary>
        /// There are no comments for Property Id in the schema.
        /// </summary>
        [global::System.Data.Objects.DataClasses.EdmScalarPropertyAttribute(EntityKeyProperty=true, IsNullable=false)]
        [global::System.Runtime.Serialization.DataMemberAttribute()]
        [global::System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations.ScaffoldColumn(false)]
        public int Id
        {
            get
            {
                return this._Id;
            }

You'll also want to make note that even though Entity Framework supports many to many relationships (sorta), that Dynamic Data for VS2008 SP1 does not. This blog entry claims a solution. I need to dig into it yet.

Interesting articles on Entity Framework, and AJAX Accordian Control DataBinding

Here's a couple of links to articles that I've read recently that I found interesting or noteworthy...

• So many articles on the EntityFramework I've read are so high level that they are nearly useless, and others with so detailed you can't see the forest through the trees. this article provides a short, but in depth overview.

• Here's a nice article about the .NET Ajax Control Toolkit Accordian control and databinding. Includes code and a clear explanation.

Installing Reporting Services on Windows 7, Vista or Windows Server 2008

As usual I'm in the never ending process of expanding my knowledge of Microsoft Technology. Today its SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services. I've noodled around with Reporting Services in 2005 back in the days of running XP and it was all pretty easy to install/configure (even without reading the docs). However now I'm on Windows 7 and have run into a problem. Running everything (IE and Visual Studio) seems to help. I ran across this post which offers some alternatives.

SharePoint 2010 Developer Training

Channel 9 has launched SharePoint 2010 Training and Office 2010 online training courses.

From the "Developer Roadmap" Section...

• This developer overview by Ted Pattison is good, worth the 30 minutes.

• A SharePoint main routine in VS2010 - warning - targeting 64 bit only now!.

• Brief overview of VS2010 and SharePoint Designer enhancements for SharePoint

• Brief overview of PowerShell and how to load the SharePoint Provider for SharePoint Administration

• This LINQ to SharePoint intro explains how the new LINQ to SharePoint provider will likey replace much of what one would typically do with CAML

(Hint - click a month/year, then click a date.)